A SWEETER MUSIC

JEROME KITZKE - "THERE IS A FIELD"

of SANBORN John

Collaboration with Sarah Cahill

UNITED STATES, 2009, 00:17:35

Genre : Video art
Keyword : Music

Summary :
In 2009, Sarah Cahill commissioned 18 composers to write on the subject of peace, and she received a diverse collection of reflections on violence, loss, history, pain and enlightenment; all meditations on the meaning of "peace". The composers include Kyle Gann, The Residents, Meredith Monk, Terry Riley, Phil Kline, Yoko Ono, Fredric Rzewski and Jerome Kitzke.

She then invited video artist John Sanborn to create video experiences, inspired by each composition, as a performance environment to extend the character and tone of each work. The evening length live event premiered at CAL Performances in Berkeley, in 2009, and has toured the world.


The basis of this project was to ask composers to address war and peace - that interpretation frames each work. Composer Jerome Kitzke chose two poets, Walt Whitman and Rumi, to voice “There is a Field”, making me ask “how does an artist interpret such moral themes”? Whitman’s inspiration, if that’s the word, was the American Civil War - and the results of violence he witnessed as a wound dresser. His beatific verse brings the horror of war into a quiet clarity, while the photography of Mathew Brady turns that dread into models for reportage and naive photographic compositions - captured on the battlefields.

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